I have seen much said about HDR bs NDGrad vs Manual blend and thought I would start a discussion.
[First let me start, for someone who might be less informed than I (which is not many on this forum), with the reason to use any of HDR, NDGrad, or Manual blend, is that often the brightest spot on the picture and the lightest spot on the picture are too far apart and your camera sensor is not capable of recording details in extremes.
NDgrad means that you get a grey filter that varies from clear to dark and move the dark area over the bright spots, which brings the bright area exposure down and permits details in exposure. The equipment at the low end is $20 for holder, $20 for adapter, and $50 per filter. The great thing about NDgrad is that you reduce photoshop work. It works well but is challenged when the horizon is not flat and requires lots of fiddling and carrying lots of filters and lots of on and off with filters or exposing your camera to elements.
What you do for either HDR or manual blend is to:
i) Use a tripod and a remote shutter release (so the shots are exactly lined up and blending does not create ghosting)
ii) put your camera on AEB bracketing and shoot 2 stops up and 2 stops down (Hugh tells me that you want to choose the down so that the lightest area has no blinkies for best results)
iii) then either use photomatix (CS has a version as well but most people think photomatix is better and only $100) HDR or manual blend (overlay 3 images and paint in area where the exposure is wrong on your primary image.]
From Floris: "The problem is that programs like photomatix don't differentiate using 'zones', instead they differentiate using tones. This results in things like gray clouds, dark yellow highlights, and mushy gray/brown midtones if there's texture with various contrasts. In contrast, when manual blending, if you're truly doing it manually, (or using grads), you do things by zone, ie. you drop the exposure of the whole sky, not just the clouds.. in fact, the relationship in luminosity between the clouds and sky should stay roughly the same... HDR programs miss that."
From myself: " I agree with Floris but manual blending is far more time consuming and consumes much more time. And if you blend a single image with the HDR you can achieve pretty true colors, in your final step. Iif you want to be outside more, photomatix is better because it is faster. And it is still a lot better than single image where you are challenged by extreme differences. So based on the 90/10 rule (largest impact for least effort) HDR is a great choice that requires far less skill than manual blending. And most people could not tell the difference on the outcome."
To which Floris thinks: Yes, manual blending can take more time. But, once you get the hang of it, for most images, it really doesn't take much more than a half hour to get things looking right. It usually takes me a lot longer to get the image ready for print (sharpening, textures, upsizing etc..) than the processing itself does! (mostly because of big file sizes and attention to detail). "
And below
1) My best single image processing
2) My best blend of single and hdr
Scott
[Woops - I think I picked the wrong image - In retrospect they don't look much different. I will see if I can find a better example this evening. Scott]
Well let me preface by saying that the three raw files you provided aren't really dissimilar enough to provide the range that I see in a lot of auto-blended HDR shots. The sky to the left of Rundle is really the only hot spot that needs to be pulled down a bit and none of the three exposures are really capable of doing that (it looks to me like conditions may have dictated this was not possible, just making a note fwiw).
Now, working solely in Lightroom, I can get all three images to look more or less the same, with a bit of a range of contrast in the foreground the most noticeable. Blending in the hot area in the sky might in some situations work, but in this image in particular that area looks like it would have remained fairly blown out regardless of what sort of exposures there were to work with.
All three were processed more or less identically, with some compensation for the original lightness or darkness in the range of exposures. I did add a -.50 Exposure Split ND filter to 3186 to bring down the sky a bit. Maybe this isn't the best image to use as an example, but I feel this is a good illustration of exactly why HDR isn't at all necessary and only leads to taking shortcuts in both shooting and processing.
Well.. I felt like procrastinating, so here's what I'd come up with, 10 min from raw to web. I used the bright and dark files, a two curves adjustment layers, and some burn/dodge.
newhaven's take is interesting as well - the key from seeing these two presentations is understanding that there is simply a limited amount of dynamic range you can squeeze into an image without it looking 'wrong', and your style/creative take will determine which portion of the range you go with. I went darker, newhaven went lighter, either works.
As Bryan noted, these didn't really require much at all, and I could have easily done everything I did just with the bright exposure, by processing it twice with different settings.
I manual blend everything. And it gets much faster once the general idea is understood. My biggest issue with my shot is that I need the GND to blur the water in the transition area when the sky is a much faster exposure. I've used photomatix twice and it seems so counter intuitive to use. But that's me.
Here is my manual blend. This represents 4 minutes in photoshop. I used the darkest image just for the band of open sky w/o the clouds, the middle image was used for the rest of the sky, then I used the bright one to add a bit more tonality to the grass in the foreground.
My "secret" technique is to use the select color range tool to establish the selections for the masks, then heavily blur that mask layer (radius of 40 or so) to blend the tones. After that, I may do a bit of touchup work by painting black or white on the layer masks with a low opacity setting. I like to try and avoid halos to at show blending has been used.
Note how I'm keeping the highlights on the horizon in check. That was the first thing I knew I needed to do with this shot. Other than that, it's just a matter of putting some more light on the foreground grass.
As Ben showed, it's often faster to manually blend then it is to use an automated HDR program like the one from Photomatix. Because if you let it be totally automated, it will look like a cartoon. So to get it realistic looking you have to spend more time trying to adjust everything, then it would take to simply blend the shot as Ben described.
hfillmore: Thanks for the input. I believe I did use Ndgrad in the initial exposure. Thanks for showing me what lightroom can do. My thinking is that HDR/blend_with_single_image for fast work and once you want to print it or post it as you best quality work, then manual blend, which I need to take a photoshop course to understand :{ Thanks for participating. Scott
Newhaven: As Floris says it depends on whether whether you want dark or light. I believe I took the picture at about 6:30AM, so I prefer darker with more purple in the cloud. This scene (untilted) is my screen saver at work. It reminds me of summer but some people think the goose detracts. Scott [the 2nd post takes it to far in hdr direction for me with splotches.]
BryanSwan: Thanks for showing that almost all can obtain the same with processing. This shows me that wider exposures would have been better. However, I think my 2nd post is better than what you achieved with single image processing Thanks for commenting. Scott
Floris: Thanks for commenting and letting me quote you. I think your processing comes closest to my 2nd image but I don't see a dramatic improvement in the colors. My 2nd image was hdr on 3 and then overlayed with single standard image with 1/3 of hdr showing through. Thanks for the participation. Scott
Afein: Photomatix takes a while to get used to and usually results in the colors needing some adjustment but I have the process down now. I think I need to take a photoshop course on blending. Thanks for your input. Scott
Ben: Thanks for the work. But again, my 2nd image looks closest to natural to me which was an hdr 1/3 showing and single image blend. Not saying it is the best but it is pretty good to me. thanks, Scott
Jim: Thanks for the input. Automated does not look like a cartoon though if you turn down the hdr? 2nd image. But you are probably right, I am doing lots of work. 1) Run photomatix, 2) Adjust curves, 3) Adjust colors, 4) process single image, 5) shift move on top of HDR, 6) turn back opacity by 1/3. I shall try to find something on manual blending to compare time. Thanks
Scott Stoness wrote:
It reminds me of summer but some people think the goose detracts.
The goose makes the shot IMO.
I should note: saying that you blend the HDR with the original will indeed help you counter the weird effects of HDR, and is probably the only proper way to use it. If I were ever to come across a scene where a manual blend simply wasn't practical (hasn't happened yet), then I would consider and HDR blended with a manual blend. The only time/place I see this possibly being necessary is in something like strong dappled light in a forest scene.
You're right - there's not a huge difference in color/contrast, and your HDR effort does not exhibit the usual giveaways. I would say that portions, like the foreground grass, have better contrast in mine, but that can easily be added after HDRing anyways.
think ben's version works best for me here. good idea w/ the color selection...though i just use a large brush then go in and tune it up. then the fun w/ adding adjustment layers and masking those ;-)
aFeinPhoto.com wrote:
think ben's version works best for me here. good idea w/ the color selection...though i just use a large brush then go in and tune it up. then the fun w/ adding adjustment layers and masking those ;-)
I'm a big fan of blending multiple exposures, typically two but sometimes many more. However, the shot shown here could work pretty well with either that approach of with a grad ND. I'd prefer the former since it permits a bit more work to be done with the front face of the peak.
Although I need to print tonight, I may go download your files and play a bit...
Is it photography or is it Photoshop (Photo Art)? That will forever be the question in our digital age. Whether the end result is called art is not the issue. Art takes all forms. The question becomes: Is the art photography?
I went for a bit lighter rendition of the scene, thinking of how it would look as a print - where overly dark renditions tend to not work as well as on the monitor. I adjusted the gray point to move a bit away from the blue shade light in the foreground.(I'm not certain yet whether this is better or not, or whether it also needs to be blended a bit with a mask.) The rest was done with many, many masked curves layers - which is generally my favorite way to control these things. I did do a bit of dodging/burning since that was a bit quicker for a few of the modifications I wanted to make.
One interesting and, I think, important point: I started with all three of your original images. When I looked at the brightest frame I found that it was really quite a decent exposure. The only part that was blown out was a very small bit of the bright sky right above the ridge at the left side, and this was easily fixed using the recovery slider in ACR. In the end, I started only used a tiny bit of the middle image in two places: I used a mask to bring in a bit of the very bright sky at the lower left from the darker image and I also brought a bit of it in to darken a few sections of the water. Frankly, I could have probably done this by modifying the single image, but since I had the darker middle version available I figured I'd use it.
I also made a small CA correction and deleted one dust spot just below the grass covered peninsula extending from the right side.
Oh, and I cropped it to a 4:3 ratio. To my eye, there wasn't a lot at the right and left edges, and in fact by cropping I think I gave the bird and peak a bit more presence and accented the vertical dimension a bit.
As I look at these a day later, I grow more fond of the BW rendition. I like the way that it tends to abstract the forms, and I feel that the bird is set off more strongly in BW.
Finally to those who think that Photoshop work in post such as we see in this thread is not "real photography," real photographers have been doing this sort of thing since the darkroom days. The only thing new here is the methods for doing post-processing - not the fact that it is done.
jsuro wrote:
Is it photography or is it Photoshop (Photo Art)? That will forever be the question in our digital age. Whether the end result is called art is not the issue. Art takes all forms. The question becomes: Is the art photography?
Best,
Jose
Jose - tough questions. I think the answer to me is that there is a style of photography where people are trying to make the picture as close to what they saw as possible, within the context that the camera cannot see as well as our eyes the dynamic differences."Landscape Photography"
And then there is a style of making the image as powerful a mood as possilbe wwithout constraining yourself to making it look real. eg abstract. "Digital Art"
And within my defintion I am much closer to the former. And lots of people think HDR is closer to the latter but if done well, it can be closer to real than a single image process.
Dan: I like your image but it does not look like morning 7:30AM to me.
Alen: I think I like you image the best that I have seen so far. A bit darker and it would be perfect for me. Which kind of gets back to what Floris said that it depends on preference. I shall see if I can follow your method.
It's been really neat to see everyone's variants here. One question to always keep in mind is whether you're trying to get the image to look as you saw it, or not. Either is perfectly fine, but it's something that's good to think about. To my eye, at this early hour, looking into the sunrise, the scene needs to be pretty dark for it to look the way it was. Edit - I wrote this before I saw Scott's latest response, which basically says the same thing.
Dan - regarding dark prints - in my experience they work just fine, they just require proper lighting, and likely a dark mat. Of course, most homes are rather poorly lit, and unless you have expensive anti-glare glass, you need to be really careful using direct lighting. So in that sense, a lighter rendition may end up looking better in a poorly lit environment. But take a dark print out into the sun and it looks just spectacular, IMO. To my eye, your version looks more like the light levels I would expect on a cloudy day at midday.
One more point, which some of the versions here miss, is that the foreground grass should be just as bright as the spit of grass in the middle of the lake - they are receiving the same light. That's what doesn't work for me in Ben's version.
Scott - your last posting, while clearly and HDR to me, is actually not that bad as far as they go. But there are still some muddy contrasts. Here's one that pulls the highlights back a touch more and puts in a bit more shadow detail, any more and I think it starts to look too fake. Note that putting a black mat around the image like this really helps bring out those shadow details, amazing really.
Thanks for commenting. Scott
